Sunday, May 23, 2010

I've been bad....but not the worst I've ever been. I fell off the diet, journaling, sticking to a budget and cleaning the house and being positive wagon. This is usually what happens when I let my depressive feelings take over and envelope me instead of trying to press through the fog. My goal was to eleminate those peroids all together. I know I will always feel the depressive moods but the point was to keep going through the motions of daily life until the negative feelings pass and to use tools to keep the positive feelings around longer. I see now that maybe I need to take babysteps and have a goal to do most everything during those periods and try to make those periods as short as possible. Sorry I know I'm rambling but I do this when I'm back on an upswing. I first look around at everything that I neglected, work on getting caught up, then analyze my feelings to come up with strageties to avoid falling behind with life when I feel depressed. At the moment I'm near the end of getting caught up mode and begining the obsessive analyzation stage. UGH.

So today I'm thankful for.....

1. The debt collectors that bought out the debt we still owe on my hubby reposessed Durango (in which we were upside down on). We owe almost 13,000 but they are offering us a settlement deal to pay 10% ($1261) and they will forgive the rest of the debt. YAY big win here because that counts for a little more than half our total debt.
2. I'm thankful for my Grandmother who is loaning me the 1261 interest free and is letting me pay her $50 a month until we get our taxes next year (yes we already spent our taxes this year on debt and moving) then I will give her a lump sum for the remainder.
3. I'm also thankful for my friend "M" who used to be a morgage broker. He informed us that the aprox. 10,000 that the debt collector is forgiving us will be viewed by the IRS as taxable income. BUT since we are dirt poor right now if we fill out the proper paperwork and show that our remaining debt is still more that what we own (which it totally it because we don't own hardly anything of value) we can get around paying taxes on it.
4. I'm thankful for my hubby who pitched in around the house with cooking and laundry when I was on a, "I Don't Wanna Do Anything Binder."
5. I'm thankful for my children....who always manage to make me smile at least once a day with some silly thing they say or do...it so makes up for the times they drive me NUTS.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

In the previous post I was complaining about standing up to hubby and not spending our extra money. Well over the course of the week, I managed to nickle and dime our cushion into the negative. BACK to doing ChaCha...I have until the 17th to come up with at least $50. I hate doing the extra work, but it was my fault. I've been feeling tired and run down all week. I think I'm on a down swing, because I was pretty manic when I started this blog and for the last 4 days I've had the I don't wanna do anything feeling. The house is a mess and I'm behind with school work and work work. So it's time to get back on track with my Gratitude Journal, maybe it will turn my mood around.

I'm thankful for:

1. The time I spent with my oldest son this week, helping him do his science fair project. It made me realize I don't spend enough time with him. I end up spending so much time with the babies and he gravitates toward his dad because he is almost 9 and boys that age prefer their fathers. But still it was nice to have some one on one time with him.

2. I'm thankful that I have a private office which allowed my son to hang out and work on his project while I got caught up on work hours I missed last week.

3. I'm thankful for my husband who is picking up the slack around the house with me being so busy....and the fact that I'm not doing as much because I'm fighting a depression spell.

5. My silly friends- who at the moment are listing fun and silly names on my facebook page for the baby turtle my hubby rescued from his work this afternoon, and is now our new pet. So far my top two faves are McGruber and Mr. T

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

When it comes to household finances I have been in charge our whole marriage. Hubby and I are trying something new as we work through our issues, full disclosure when it comes to bills and spending. In the past I paid everything and just gave him an allowance. There was a time in our lives when he had no clue how much things cost and even more shocking had no clue as to what his take home salary was. This created a problem when he got fired from his job and took a, "fun," job that paid a fraction of what he was making before. We are still recovering financially from the chaos that ensued from that decision of his. The other problem we had was my spending addiction. When we had money I could spend frivolously when I was stressed and it would not get us behind in bills, but it meant we had no savings. When things were tight, I spent more because I was stressed, but had less money to spend so this got us in trouble. Now I still pay the bills, but we sit down once a week and go over our budget and analyze every penny we spend, and we have agreed to stick to the budget no matter what.

Until yesterday we were starting to fall behind again in the bills department. I had been doing ChaCha for extra money on the side and had two bills that we were paying late because I knew I could get away with it. When I went to the mailbox yesterday we received a wonderful blessing, unexpected money. When I told hubby about it I saw the look in his eyes, he wanted to go on a spending spree. He said he wanted to go get the kids baseball stuff this is something we had in our budget for 3 weeks from now. I said let me look at our budget because it is more important to pay everything on time. When it was all said and done we had $300 left over after paying the bills plus I was excited at the idea of not having to do ChaCha to get us caught up. So I tell hubby, yes we can spend the $70 we budgeted for baseball stuff now instead of waiting.

We were at the store and I was keeping track of how much he spent, then he starts looking at stuff we had not discussed buying. When I said, no, he got angry with me and threw a fit like a two year old. He said, "we are caught up, we have the extra money, whats the big deal?"

Over the past few years I have been the one in trouble for going on shopping sprees, then later when it matters we are broke. YES I do have a shopping addiction, but after reading several Dave Ramsey books and sticking to the plan, I have curbed my spending. I admit, I felt that rush sitting there looking at the extra money yesterday. I started thinking about all sorts of things I would like to buy. Then I told myself I did not need those things and fought the urge. Hubby on the other hand was not in control of those urges. If the situation was reversed I would have been in big trouble for trying to spend extra.

Double standards happen like this all of the time in our marriage. He gets mad at me for things I do wrong. I feel he should not get so mad because he is guilty for the very same things. When it comes to insignificant things I let this go. For instance when he gets mad because I waited until late at night on a Saturday to do all the dishes for the entire day instead of doing them after each meal. (and yes he is guilty of doing the same thing) Yesterday was a different story, fighting with him on this double standard was very important. In the past I would have let him overspend, then I would have been the one catching the heat when something unexpected comes up two weeks from now and we do not have the extra money.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

So I mentioned in an earlier post that I needed to forgive my hubby for getting us into a bad place financially, then cheating on me. In the course of trying to work things out with him...I..umm..well lets just say I haven't been perfect.

I started out by escaping my everyday stresses playing online poker, which surprisingly is a place where guys flirt with you like crazy if you have a cute picture and spunky personality. It was not my intention to pick up a guy but I was in an angry phase in dealing with my husbands infidelity. The attention of other guys can be intoxicating, even more than normal when you feel your husband no longer cares. I clicked with a few friends and added them to my msn messenger. Over the course of a few months I skirted on inappropriate conversations with a few that escalated to having phone sex and cyber sex with one and exchanging naughty pics. I rationalized my behavior because I was trying to work on things with hubby and found sex with him to be tedious. The picture of him with another woman would always pop into my head and ruin the mood for me and hubby commented more than once that sex was less than spectacular. The flirting and attention from a few of these guys in a way revved me for hubby and made sex better. If a picture of him with another woman popped into my head, I would think about being with another guy and that kept me turned on.

Then at some point for some reason, probably because I was having fun, was doing a good job at rationalizing and I always seem to push the envelope, I decided to have a physical affair. I in no way wanted to leave my husband but I also thought to myself at several points that maybe having a no strings attached short term affair would help me get over my anger because we would be even. I found a website that is made for discrete dating for married people and signed up under a fake name and fake e-mail address. Through the site over a 3 month period I met several guys online and ended up meeting 4 of them in person and had sexual relations with them. Three of them were one time deals and one guy I met with on three separate occasions. I don't worry that they will ever find me and tell my husband, these men were married and they have something to loose. I also do not worry about their wives finding anything they may have saved, pictures I sent cannot identify me and like I said I did not use my real name or location, I also met them when I was out of town on business, so even the men do not know any real personal information about me.

Was it exciting sneaking around and having another man want me, touch me and pay attention to me? YES. It also made me realize how lonely it would be if I were single trying to date again, the emotional roller coaster you go through meeting someone new can be exciting, but it is also stressful at times. I know my husband and I can still say, he is the greatest lover I have ever known...still to this day. Emotionally we may be working through some things but I know where he stands so marriage in my opinion is not as emotionally taxing as dating.

I stopped messing around with other men when I confided in my best friend K. He was very disappointed with me and told me my rationalizations were stupid and selfish. He was right.

Cheating is just like shoplifting, you start out small, or there may in the beginning be an understandable reason for doing it. In time, you become addicted to the rush, you want more and more and you get sloppy and eventually get caught. I feel like I have been able to move on a little more with my husband since giving up that world, I do feel even with him, not because I was seeking revenge. I know it happened in a similar way for him, he was talking to an old friend who happened to be a girl and it got out of control, then later got bold and started a physical relationship with someone else. I now understand how enticing it was and how hard it is to stop lying and sneaking around, because I have experienced those feelings myself.

I deleted my fake account on the cheating website, but have not brought myself to delete the yahoo account and find myself loging in as invisible to see who is online. In fact I do it about once a week since I decided to quit fooling around two months ago. Like I said, its a hard habit to break, but I quit smoking cigarettes for my husband (11 years ago), and I quit smoking weed for my kids (9 years ago) so I'm sure I can kick this habit as well.

The worst part of all of this is at this point I do not think I would take back what I did. Yes it was important for me to stop, so I could move on in my relationship. I don't suggest wives who had husbands who cheat should go out and get even. I'm just saying, that for me, in some crazy way, the experience has helped me realize what I really want, and now I can start fighting to get it back.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

I was on track with the positive thinking this week until my babysitter called in once again saying her kids were sick. I may be wrong, maybe there is something up with her kids but since she found out my job will pay her 5 days a month that my kids don't come, it seems like her kids are conveniently sick 5 times every month. So Tuesday she calls at the last minute and says her kid is sick. I had a meeting with my committee and could not miss work but this is my husbands busy time of the year at work. So I went to my meeting and he just went to work an hour late. Then she called at the last minute yesterday saying he kid was still sick and she was going to finally take him to the doctor, then called later saying she would not be able to take my kids today as well.

Now I am thankful that my job is flexible, Tuesday hubby brought my 2 and 3 year old to my office and they played and watched Dora on the laptop while I worked, then we go to lunch at home and I do some work from home while they nap. Yesterday and today they went with me to the office for 4 hours in the morning and then we went to lunch and the are laid down for a nap for two hours before we have to go get my other two kids. When I get the other kids at 3 the last two hours I should be working....I honestly have no time to work because they all want something. Basically I should work an 8 hour day but I end up putting in 6 hours on days my babysitter calls in sick. This week was slow for work but I do side work online asChaCha Guide. We are behind in money and I need to earn $200 by April 6th and because work was slow this week I was going to sneak in some ChaCha time. It is a pain in the ass to do ChaCha when the kids are around. So Ive been stressed this week because of my frustration with the sitter, being behind and possibly not making enough money to cover bills, and I will still have to make up 6 hours of work in my main job..sometime next week.

Although I'm frustrated...at least I did get to put some hours in, and at least my job doesn't mind my kids being there and me doing some work from home, and being thankful that I even have ChaCha to help supplement our income at times like this.

Oh yeah...I'm working on my Masters online...I haven't had any time left to check into school these past few days, so tonight I will be doing ChaCha as well as burning the midnight oil for school.

I know every mom feels overloaded but this week...is an extra crazy and frustrating week....but...Stay Positive, Right?

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

I don't know if anyone else does this, but when I'm in a certian mood I have song lyrics running through my head that correspond with the mood. For example, I should be doing homework right now, and doing dishes, but I'm in the mood to just chill and do nothing. So I have the song, "Burrito's," by Sublime running through my head. Specifically the chorus,

When I get a negative song running through my head and its because of a negative mood, I instantly try to think of a more positive song. So right now, I'm gonna get off my Ass, go do the dishes and do my homework and get a new song stuck in my head. Maybe a little of, "Good Day," by Jewel,

"It's gonna be all right, no matter what they say
It's gonna be a good day, just wait and see
It's gonna be OK, cause I'm OK with me
It's gonna be, it's gonna be"

1.Thick windows- Our house has undergone a lot of remodeling and the final project is the yard. The backyard was completely torn up because of the dumpster and construction equipment driving on and off the property over the last 9 months. Today they leveled out the dirt, put down manure and planted seeds. I look forward to having grass in the next few months...but today I'm thankful for my thick windows because my yard does not smell very nice.

2. The flexibility of my job-Today the babysitters kids were sick AGAIN. I had a meeting first thing in the morning so hubby called into work to say he would be an hour and a half late. After my meeting I was able to gather up the rest of my work and bring it home. Sometimes I bring the kids (the youngest two because the oldest two are in school) up to my office for the day, the color and play and watch Dora on my laptop. As long as they are not crazy disruptive, and its not something that happens too much, as long as I meet my deadlines my boss is pretty relaxed with me.

3. Small town living-I grew up in a city, and lived in two major mid west cities and now live in a town of 4000 people, I love the slow pace of life. No longer having a commute for work also gives us so much more time with our family

4. DVR- My day is so busy, and I love to catch a good movie or watch certian shows. It is impossible to watch tv with 4 kids running around and in all fairness I think after working all day the 4 hours between getting home and putting the kids to bed every week night should be spent with my children....not ploped in front of the tv ignoring them. The DVR allows me to catch my shows after my children have gone to bed.

5. Thrift Stores- Summer is almost here and I love buying new pretty clothes during the school year but not during the summer. The kids go do daycare 4 days a week and spend most of the day in the sandbox. (I work for in higher education but as the head of a program, not as a teacher, so I have to put in hours during the summer but I get a three day weekend all summer) I love buying old stained thrift store clothes and not worrying about how their new pretty shirt may get ruined at daycare. Plus it saves me a lot of money in the summer months.